The Hallowed Hunt

AFTER THE BRIEFEST DAWN MEETING WITH WENCEL, ALL practicalities, Ingrey took his prisoner on the road. Hetwar’s troop still escorted them, glad enough to be lighter by one dead prince and a dozen surly retainers and all their baggage. Ingrey had even sent the latest warden-dedicat home, her place taken by a middle-aged maidservant of Horseriver’s household who rode pillion behind Gesca. The small cavalcade climbed out of the valley of Oxmeade into the breaking day, and began to wind through the settled country of the rich lowlands belonging to the earldom of Stagthorne.

Taking a lead from Horseriver, Ingrey edged his mount forward and without apology motioned Ijada to ride ahead with him. He was nonetheless conscious of Gesca’s narrow gaze, following them. Just so they outdistanced the curious lieutenant’s ears.

Ijada was unusually pale and withdrawn this morning, with gray smudges under her eyes. Her smile, returning his curt nod, was brief and muted. Was she finally coming to realize that she rode into a trap? Too late?

'We cannot continue to flounder along with no attempt at a plan,' he began firmly. 'You’ve rejected mine. Have you a better?'

'Run away was not my idea of a plan.' She cocked an eye at him. 'And when did I become we?'

His mouth, tightening, paused. The first hour I saw you at Boar’s Head, five gods help me. 'In the upstairs room of that inn at Red Dike,' he answered instead.

She tilted her head in a conciliating nod.

'We share a certain problem apart from your legal morass,' he continued. 'Cat maiden.'

'Oh, it’s not apart. Dog lord.'

Despite himself, his lips twisted up in return. Did he truly smile so little, that his mouth should feel so odd doing this? 'Earl Horseriver has promised this much to shield you. He told me this morning that you are to be lodged in a house in the capital that he owns, with his servants about you. Better than some dank cell down by the river, and a sign, I think, that your destruction is not yet set in train. There may be a little time.'

'He means to keep me close,' she said thoughtfully.

'At Wencel’s request, Lord Hetwar has appointed me your house warden for this arrest.' No need to mention how his breath had skipped at this unexpected stroke of good fortune. 'Judging by the note his courier brought me, Hetwar is glad enough to have you kept out of sight for a time.'

Her eyes flew up. 'Wencel means to keep us both close, then. Why?'

'I judge... ' his voice slowed, uncertain. 'I judge he is a little off-balance, just now. So much is happening at once, with the funeral and his distraught wife, atop the roil already with the hallow king’s illness and—the Mother avert, but it seems most probable—the impending election. Biast and his retinue will be arriving in Easthome, and the prince will certainly draw his brother-in-law into the concerns of his party. Beneath that lie Wencel’s other uncanny secrets, old and new. If Wencel can make one piece of his puzzle hold still till he has time to attend to it, well, so much the better. For him. As for me, I don’t intend to hold still.'

'What do you intend?'

'I’ve had one idea, so far. If, as I suspect, more than one power in Easthome would like to see your trial suppressed, this scandal swept quietly aside, it might even be accepted. Your kin might call on the old kin-law, and offer a blood-price for Prince Boleso.'

She inhaled, brows climbing in surprise. 'Will the Temple care to have its justiciars excluded from so high a case?'

'If the highest lords of kin Stagthorne and kin Badgerbank agree, the divines of the Father’s Order will have no choice. There lies my first doubt, for the king is unfit to accept any proposal; at the time I left Easthome, Hetwar was uncertain that the old man had even been made to understand that Boleso had, um, met his death. Biast, once he arrives, will be half-prepared and wholly distracted. Clear decisions from the Court at Easthome have been hard to come by, these past weeks, and it will likely get worse before it gets better. But Earl-ordainer Badgerbank is no small power in his own right. If he could be convinced, for the honor of his house, to sponsor you, and Wencel urged to help persuade him, the scheme might have a chance.'

'A prince’s blood-price could be no small sum. Far beyond my poor stepfather’s means.'

'It would have to come from Badgerbank’s purse. With Wencel, perhaps, helping fill it on the left hand.'

'Have you met Earl Badgerbank? I did not think he had the reputation as a generous man.'

'Um... ' Ingrey hesitated, then answered honestly, 'no, he doesn’t.' He glanced across at her, riding in the warming morning light. 'But if the money—'

'Bribe?' she muttered.

'—were raised elsewhere, I think there would be less trouble coaxing him to lend his name. Your dower lands—how large are they?'

Her voice grew oddly reluctant. 'They run for some thirty miles east and west along the roots of the Raven Range, and twenty miles north up to the rim of the watershed with the Cantons.'

Ingrey blinked, taken aback. 'That is rather larger than you led me to picture. A forested tract is no small resource; it may yield up game, timber, charcoal, mast for pigs, perhaps a great prize of minerals beneath... you have nearly the price of a prince right there, I think! How many villages or hamlets are to be found there, how many hearths in the tax census?'

'None. Not in those lands. No one hunts there. No one goes in.'

The sudden tension in her tone arrested him. 'Why not?'

She shrugged, unconvincingly. 'They are accursed. Haunted woods, whispering woods. The Wounded Woods, they are called, and indeed, the trees seem sick. All who enter are plagued by nightmares of blood and death, they say.'

'Tales,' Ingrey scoffed.

'I went in,' Ijada replied steadily. 'After my mother died, and it was at last made clear that the tract had indeed come to me. I went to see for myself, for I believed I had the right. And duty. The forester was reluctant to escort me, but I made him. My stepfather’s grooms and my maid were terrified. For a full day we rode in, then made a camp. Most of the land is raw and steep, all ravines and abrupt cliffs, briars and stones poking through, and gloomy hollows. At the center is one broad, flat valley, filled with great oak trees, centuries old. That is the darkest part, said to be the most haunted, a cursed shrine of the Old Weald. Local legend says it is lost Bloodfield itself, for all that two other earldoms along the Ravens claim that doubtful honor.'

'Many old shrine sites have become farmers’ fields, in time.'

'Not this one. We slept there that night, much against the will of my escort. And indeed, we dreamed. The grooms dreamed of being torn apart by animals, and woke screaming. My maid dreamed that she drowned in blood. Come morning, they were all wild to get away.'

Ingrey considered her words. And then he considered her silences. 'But you were not?'

She hesitated so long this time he almost asked again, but held his tongue. His patience was rewarded at length when she murmured, 'We all dreamed. It took me some time to realize that my dream was different.'

Silences, he reminded himself, had a power all their own. He waited some more. She regarded him under her lashes, as if gauging his tolerance for further tales of the uncanny.

She began, he thought, obliquely. 'Have you ever witnessed an almsgiver mobbed by famished beggars? How they gather in a vast swirl, each one weak, but in their numbers strong and frightening, frantic? Give to us, give, for we starve... Yet however much you gave, all that you had, it would not be enough; they might tear you apart and devour you without being satisfied.'

He granted her a wary nod, uncertain where this was tending.

'In my dream... men came to me out of the trees. Bloody-handed men, many headless, in the rusted armor of the Old Weald. Some bore animal standards, the skulls all decorated about with colored stones, or wore capes of skins; stag and bear, horse and wolf, badger and otter, boar and lynx and ox and I know not what else. Faceless, blurred, horribly hacked. They raved around me in a great begging crowd, as though I were their queen, or liege- lady, come to spread some strange largesse among them. I could not understand their language, and their signs bewildered me. I was not afraid of them, for all they pawed my garments with rotting hands until my dress was soaked in cold black blood. They wanted something of me. I could not make out what it was. But I knew they were owed it.'